Dating Clone Wars — Why almost every dating application feels the same
The year was 2013–14. Tinder had recently moved from the button UI to the Swipe UI. By the coming year, Tinder had reached 1 Billion Swipes a day, a clear indication of the love that the users had for the application and its radical new interface. Other applications in the space tried to play catch-up in the best way they knew how to — by playing it safe and copying what worked. This was the start of the Battle of the Clones.
In the present day, there are not many changes in the way a dating application approaches the problem of dating. The core of every single application remains the same, matching people on information. The applications in the market follow the same steps:-
- Users create a profile — Filling up information and uploading photos
- Applications provide matches based on location, common likes or dislikes
- Users like or dislike matches recommended by an application, based on photos/profile information
- If two users match, they have the choice to talk to each other
- Done.
Selecting users based on their profiles has been famous since 2004, when the early social networks paved way for a new way of communication.
But, this is NOT 2004.
Mike Wadhera, the founder and CEO of Teleport, aptly named his TechCrunch Article, “The Information Age is Over, Welcome to the Age of Experience.” In 2018, we live in a world where technology has created ways for us to live inside a malleable man-made reality (Virtual Reality) and also provided us with ways to better our own (Augmented Reality). We have computers that learn faster than ever, and know more about us than we might know about ourselves.
Applications in this age need to create new dating experiences for users, leveraging these ever-evolving technologies. With cameras on our phones improving faster than ever, Dating applications could leverage the capabilities on these 20 billion-odd devices in the world, to create experiences that would truly help to bridge the gaps and help in building a connection between people.
Imagine a world where two people could go on a date, while sitting in their very own houses, before they approve of each other as a potential dating partner.
Imagine a world where a person could send their lover, virtual gifts such as teddy bears and roses, in real-time that could be seen in the real world using the phone’s camera.
Imagine a world where an intelligent virtual dating assistant could give recommendations for presents and plan your dates with your lover by analyzing your previous chats together.
It is indeed sad that the most radical innovation in the field of dating applications in recent times in terms of interaction and experiences has been adding videos to profiles.
For companies in the dating sector, it is time to buckle up.
Fail fast. Fail often. But most importantly, invent.
As the Great One, Wayne Gretzky, once said, “Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been”
